"Russian sleeper agent":

● "A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization not to undertake an immediate mission but to act as a potential asset if activated"

● "Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering over 17 million square kilometers, with a population of 146 million."

● incidents of espionage, murder, political destabilization and military invasion

○ "political destabilization": "the action of making a government, area or political group lose power or control, or making a political or economic situation less strong or safe, by making changes or problems"

● nuclear weapons

"Coerced by the Chinese government":

● "coerce": "persuade to do something by using force or threats"

● "China is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people, covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers."

● incidents of espionage, citizen repression, military action around borders

● nuclear weapons

"Al-Qaeda sympathizer":

● "Al-Qaeda is a multinational militant Sunni Islamic extremist network composed of Salafist jihadists."

○ "Jihadism has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of jihad."

■ "Jihad": "a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam"

● incidents of terrorism, slaughter and murder

○ "terrorism": "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims"

"ISIS operative":

● "Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a militant Islamic group that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam."

● incidents of terrorism, slaughter and military action

"domestic terrorist":

● "a person who commits terrorist acts in their own country against their fellow citizens"

● incidents of domestic terrorism in the United States. Includes Oklahoma City Bombing.

"religious fanatic":

● incidents of terrorism, murder, property damage and poisonings in the United States

"political extremist":

● "someone whose beliefs fall outside mainstream societal values and on the fringes of the ideological spectrum. In the U.S., the typical political extremist is motivated by anger, fear and hatred - most commonly toward the government and people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities."

● incidents of terrorism, murder, property damage and hate crimes

○ "hate crime":

■ "crime committed on the basis of race, color, and religion; may also include crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability"

■ "often a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson or vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes, or conspiring or asking another person to commit such crimes, even if the crime was never carried out"

"sociopath":

● "a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience"

○ "murder-suicide": "an act in which an individual kills one or more people before (or while) killing themselves"

○ "suicide attack": "any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted his own death as a direct result of the attacking method used"

○ "spree killer": "someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations"

○ "going postal": "becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment"

Husband taught me more about this world's politics in the five minutes he talked with Sam than in the several weeks in this world he has talked with me.

Few of these ideas were truly new to me. There were instances of many of them in different forms in Eorzea. Though I had not heard of an instance of "going postal". Certainly the moogles did not seem to kill each other.

Husband once quoted a video called Broken Arrow: "I don't know what's worse, that it happens at all or that it happens enough that there's a name for it." There were no scholars in Eorzea writing articles about such things in Wikipedia, since there was no Wikipedia. Perhaps there were names for them in a book somewhere in the Great Gubal Library. I did not notice such a thing in my visits there.

Nuclear weapons are not news to me. Husband described them when he compared the demonstration of the Ultima weapon in the Praetorium to a nuclear explosion. He said there were single nuclear bombs that could destroy entire cities, things the size of cars that could be dropped from airships or flown on rockets across seas and continents. He probably meant an Earth city, of which apparently there are far larger than Tulsa.

He said he thought the Ultima weapon could fit in a beer keg.

Wikipedia says the United States has many nuclear weapons, as do Russia and China, more than enough to kill all the people in all three countries and perhaps damage the entire world. And China is not kind to its people, and Russia is not kind to its neighbors, and the United States leadership changes often and who the United States is kind to can change with it.

And there are other countries with nuclear weapons, and countries with chemical weapons like Black Rose, and countries and former countries and potential countries with guns and bombs and spies and willingness to do harm. And this is the state of the world without people like us in quantity who can lift cars and use magic and teleport and carry guns and poison and nuclear weapons in their inventory.

Husband perhaps should have mentioned this when he spoke of confused and upset hyur.

Superman is older than nuclear weapons, but even before them the idea of a hero must have been appealing to people, one who could fly and who could not be shot or blown up. The minstrels in Eorzea did well with stories of heroes.

But for a story of a hero to be interesting, there must be a target for his heroism. The primals we fought in Eorzea were our targets. If we had not fought primals, there would not have been as many stories about us.

Likewise, the superheroes in the comic books have supervillains to fight. The people who invent superheroes invent supervillains too. Perhaps the conflict is the reason for the stories rather than the superheroes themselves. Perhaps people like stories about conflict.

Is that why there is so much violence in this world? Do people here like conflict?

We can do things most people cannot. Are we superheroes? Must we expect conflict and supervillains?

I asked Husband about this as we settled in to bed after work. He told me to add Spiderman to my reading.